Finish LineA Child is BornRAISING THE NEXT SKI RACER BY BILL MCCOLLOM

IT’S BEEN A GLORIOUS SUMMER here in the Northeast, and
I’ve been doing my best to take full advantage. After all, with
“Recreation” as a middle name, I have certain inherent responsibilities. But my typical summer of frenzy has been recently interrupted. There’s been a new addition to the family — William.
When I first heard the news in the late fall that I was to become
a grandfather, I started checking out every baby I ran across.
I’d accost young parents with a barrage of questions in the supermarket, on the streets and through open car windows. How
old is he or she? Can she sit up? Roll over? Smile? Talk? Most
parents were more than glad to indulge my curiosity, and before
long I had accumulated quite an inventory of what was to be
expected with each development stage. After all, I wanted to
be sure my young grandchild would be keeping pace in this
competitive world.

Now, don’t get me wrong here. Competition may play a significant role in our family, but I’m not going to be one of those
overzealous, hyper, grandparent types who enroll their grandchildren in summer ski camps or tennis lessons before they can
walk. Of course, William’s parents have the final say on these
matters, but I’m hereby pledging to be an advocate for just letting the child develop as nature sees fit.

After seven months of anticipation, on May 30th at around 8
p.m. at the Concord Hospital in New Hampshire, William Mad-dox McCollom first met his family. I happened to be at a Red
Sox game that day and, sensing an imminent arrival, raced up
to Concord. I got there just in time to see a squirmy, wrinkled
baby asleep with an exhausted mother, and a father whose
eyes were still spinning in their sockets. Being two weeks early,
William was a bit on the scrawny side, but was tall with hands
and feet the size of Michael Phelps, and beautiful dark skin, just
like his mother.

I had forgotten just how helpless newborn babies are with
their floppy heads and unfocused eyes. William spent his first
days (and nights) on a two-hour cycle: eat, sleep, poop, get
fussy; eat, sleep, poop, get fussy… His helplessness and lack
of awareness those first few weeks made the family dog, Mattie (a small black, hairy, poodle-thing of reasonable canine intelligence), seem like a college professor. Even at his earliest
infancy, however, William never ceased to be a non-stop entertainment center for his family and friends. His standard repertoire for his first month consisted of making faces in his sleep,
peeing on whomever happened to be changing his diaper, and

waving his arms around like Leonard Bernstein conducting the
New York Philharmonic Orchestra. And by the time he was five
weeks old, he’d dazzle the family by flipping from his stomach to
his back and showing off his big, toothless smile.
Over the next month, William (“Liam” is still in the test phase)
grew at a prodigious rate, and by the end of his second month
on this earth, he had transformed from a mini-Manute Bol to
more of a Charles Barkley. And even more exciting was his
dominant left arm action when it came time to conducting his
imaginary symphonies.
Knowing that lefties are at a premium in major league baseball,
and, in tennis, can slice a devastating serve to the ad-court, I
thought that surely a little encouragement wouldn’t be out of
line. I think I’ll start by getting him dressed in his Jon Lester,
Red Sox outfit. We’ll then exercise that left shoulder, work on
the wrist-snap required for his curveball, and rig up a tiny ice
pack for recovery after our workouts. Maybe I could also fashion
a tiny ball to fit in his left hand, and we’ll do some “short-toss”
drills when his parents aren’t looking. I’m sure this would not be
construed a violation of my pledge of noninterference, only an
early introduction into Red Sox culture.
And then I began to notice those pudgy, little legs. They sure
looked like potential skiers’ legs to me. It might be too early for
weight training, since it will be several more months before he’ll
start walking, but I bet we could fit in some innocuous speed
training. Strapping William’s car seat onto the roof rack might be
frowned upon in some circles, but I’m sure it would be all right if I
belted him into his car seat and then opened the sunroof and all
the windows in the car to let the wind stream over his face while
he waved his arms around like Bode Miller running slalom. Such
a small measure couldn’t possibly be considered to be exerting
a bias. I’ll be just introducing a few of life’s many potential options and then I’ll step back and watch nature take its course.
I take my grandparenting very seriously and look forward to
every minute with young William over the coming years. Our
family may take our sports to unprecedented levels, but nonetheless, I’ll encourage him to become his own person, and develop his own interests, regardless of whether or not they involve sports. There’s just so much to experience and so little
time. As for what William might be calling me, I’ve thought about
all the usual names for grandparents, and I think I’ve settled on
an noncontroversial name, which will please the entire family
— “Big Papi.”